13 Aralık 2012 Perşembe

Turkey weighs pivotal oil deal with Iraqi Kurdistan

ANKARA, Turkey — American diplomats are struggling to prevent a
seismic shift in Turkey’s policy toward Iraq, a change that U.S.
officials fear could split the foundations of that fractious state.

The most volatile fault line in Iraq divides the semiautonomous
Kurdistan region in the north from the Arab-majority central government
in Baghdad. As the two sides fight for power over territory and oil
rights, Turkey is increasingly siding with the Kurds.

Kurdish and Turkish leaders have had a budding courtship for
five years. But now Turkey is negotiating a massive deal in which a new
Turkish company, backed by the government, is proposing to drill for oil
and gas in Iraq’s Kurdish region and build pipelines to transport those
resources to international markets. The negotiations were confirmed by
four senior Turkish officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of political sensitivities.

“Turkey hasn’t needed to ask
what we think of this, because we tell them at every turn,” said a
senior U.S. official involved in Middle East policymaking, speaking on
the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with
the media. The official said that any bilateral energy deals with the
Kurdistan region would “threaten the unity of Iraq and push [Prime
Minister Nouri] al-Maliki closer to Iran.”

Iraqi Kurdistan has
already staked out significant autonomy, providing its own public
services, controlling airports and borders, and commanding police and
army forces. The energy deal with Turkey would all but sever Kurdistan’s
economic dependence on Baghdad, which is perhaps the primary tie that
still binds the two sides.

“We are having serious discussions with
the [Turkish] company,” said Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the
Kurdistan Regional Government. “We hope they participate in the region.”

The
Turkish government has not made a final decision. Energy Minister Taner
Yildiz is leading a review of the deal, according to senior Turkish
officials, and expects to issue a formal recommendation to Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan by the end of the year.

Turkey’s
moves come at an especially volatile time for the region. Along Turkey’s
southern border, Syria’s Kurdish minority has gained control of a large
expanse of territory in the midst of a civil war. That instability has
worried Turkish leaders, who have used their sway over the Iraqi Kurdish
leadership — both Prime Minister Barzani and his uncle, Massoud
Barzani, Kurdistan’s powerful president — to help ensure that they exert
a benign influence in Syria.

Iraq is also in crisis. On Nov. 16, a minor confrontation between Kurdish security forces and Iraqi soldiers combusted into a deadly firefight.
Since then, both sides have deployed thousands of troops, as well as
tanks and artillery, to each side of their contested border, where they
remain within firing range.

Strategic shift
Erdogan has left little doubt where his sympathies lie, accusing Maliki of “leading Iraq toward a civil war.”
Yet
Turkey’s embrace of the Iraqi Kurds is not just a function of personal
enmity. Rather, it represents a deliberate strategic shift that has
upended the conventional wisdom that once governed Turkish policy toward
Iraq.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Turkey advocated against giving
autonomy to Iraqi Kurds, fearing that such a precedent might strengthen Turkey’s Kurdish minority
in its quest for greater rights and self-governance. Turkey also was
wary that any Iraqi Kurdish territory would become a haven for the
militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the acronym PKK, which the
United States has designated a terrorist organization.

In 2007, Erdogan began to soften that stance. He took primary
responsibility for his Iraq policy away from the military and gave it to
a diplomat named Murat Ozcelik. “My instructions from the prime
minister were to build ties with the Kurds,” Ozcelik said.

U.S. diplomats encouraged the rapprochement. By pursuing
economic cooperation, Turkey could form a bulwark of mutual interest
with mainstream Iraqi Kurds who might otherwise be inclined to
sympathize with the PKK’s nationalism.

Turkey also recognized the
strategic value of Iraqi Kurdistan’s abundant oil and gas resources,
which had barely been explored under previous regimes. Turkey’s economy
was growing rapidly, at an average annual rate of about 5 percent. To
sustain that growth — and the enormous popularity it brought Erdogan —
Turkey would need new energy supplies.

Moreover, Turkey’s ambitious leaders
aspired to elevate their country to the highest echelons of
international diplomacy. To do that, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
has argued, Turkey should leverage its geographical position at the
crossroads of East and West into geopolitical power. One way to
accomplish this, he suggests, is to make Turkey a transit hub for
energy.

“The Foreign Ministry’s analysis was that relations with
Baghdad are important, but relations with the Kurds are strategic,” said
Serhat Erkmen, the Middle East political adviser at ORSAM, a research
institute connected to the Foreign Ministry. That idea now frames
Turkey’s Iraq policy, according to several officials charged with
implementing it.

Ozcelik said he initially envisioned that a
strong relationship with the Kurds could help Turkey referee the
persistent disputes between Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region,
and Baghdad.

But political progress has been elusive. Instead,
Baghdad and Irbil have fought their battles largely through their oil
policymaking. Iraqi Kurdish leaders enlisted international companies to
develop oil and gas resources, including in territory whose official
status is contested. Baghdad responded by banning any company that
contracted with the Kurdish regional government from southern Iraq’s
much larger oil fields — a policy that secured the loyalty of the
world’s biggest energy companies, including Turkey’s state oil company,
Turkish Petroleum, or TPAO.

That stalemate was broken in October
2011, when Exxon Mobil, which was already developing an enormous oil
field under a contract with Baghdad, decided to defy the ban and sign
contracts with the Kurdish government, including three swaths of
disputed land. By doing so, it implicitly endorsed Irbil’s expansive
claims of contracting and territorial authority.

Exxon Mobil’s move was pivotal, said a senior Turkish official
involved in foreign and energy policymaking. “Here is Exxon coming in,
and what is Turkey supposed to do? Keep waiting? There will be nothing
left for us!” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because of political sensitivities.

This calculus led Turkey to accelerate its courtship with
Irbil, according to several officials in the Turkish foreign and energy
ministries. At the beginning of this year, Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish
leaders began to discuss the details of a strategic energy partnership —
culminating in the exploration and pipeline deal under consideration.

Keeping Iraq united
Obama administration officials as high-ranking as Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton have advocated against such moves,
according to the Turkish officials involved in the deal, warning that
bilateral pipelines would open a route for the Kurds to circumvent
Baghdad’s authority over oil exports. That, in turn, would bring the
Kurds a big step closer to independence.

The State Department and
the White House declined to confirm these accounts or to comment on
their efforts to discourage Turkish investment in Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi
Kurdish leaders have denied that they are seeking independence, but
they confirm that they are using energy deals to achieve their political
goals of greater autonomy.

Turkish leaders also insist that they
have no interest in an independent Kurdistan. Erdogan’s foreign policy
strategists say that Turkey will always have power over the pipelines
and, with that leverage, can help keep Iraq united.

“They need us
in terms of their outreach to the world, especially in light of their
problems with the central administration,” a senior Foreign Ministry
official said. “And Turkey still supports the unity of Iraq.”

While
Erdogan has recently been happy to showcase his rapport with Iraqi
Kurdish leaders, his relationship with Maliki has never been worse.
Erdogan has given harbor in Istanbul to Iraq’s fugitive vice president,
Tariq al-Hashimi, who was sentenced to death over allegations of
running a sectarian death squad; Erdogan also has backed Maliki’s
political opponents, including their unsuccessful effort in the summer
to remove the prime minister through a no-confidence vote.

The
Obama administration has argued that Turkey’s diplomatic clout and
investment dollars make it an important counterweight in Iraq against
Iran. If Turkey were to write off southern Iraq as a lost cause, U.S.
diplomats worry, Iran would fill the breach by increasing its political
and economic presence there, gaining even more influence over Maliki.

But
those arguments have not resonated in Ankara, where many senior
officials think a major energy partnership with Iraq’s Kurdish region is
imminent. “U.S. support would be appreciated,” said one official
involved in the deal, “but it’s not a condition.”